For We Write Poems Poetry Prompt #138: The Memoir Project
http://wewritepoems.wordpress.com/
Threads
Used to believe
that all would be well
if the accident
had never happened.
No surgery,
no fragile threads
to hold head together,
no scar.
Could have lived life
unmarked
by that ugliness.
Free to be
whatever I might
have been.
Now know the accident
was no accident,
but Universe stepping in
to surgically align
otherwise misaligned trajectory,
allowing scar to shelter ear,
letting me hear what might
never have been heard.
Fragile thread of words
marking map of awareness,
weaving together this me,
I was always meant
to be-come.
Elizabeth Crawford 1/16/13
Soul's Music 
This is poignant yet powerful – why do we have to grow old before we can put a decent perspective on the past?
This is just a guess, but perhaps it is because it takes that long for knowledge to become wisdom?
Thank you Viv,
Elizabeth
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It left me wondering if the scar is fiction or metaphor. But yes, point taken!
Irene, the scar is real and happened over sixty years ago. It has shaped and formed me as nothing else, and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my existence.
Elizabeth
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Yes, aligning one’s trajectory…….often painful, but always of great value. Loved this, Elizabeth!
Some of the greatest thinkers, and writers, tell us that understanding only begins with pain. Perhaps because pain grabs our attention and keeps it there? And we work very hard to find a means of alleviating it, especially the emotional and psychological type, like that in this poem.
Elizabeth
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Beautiful. Funny, how things happen to us and we realize we would’t be the person we are without that thing happnening. for me, i got pretty seriously ill and my illness is turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to me:-)
Thank you Linda, and I would have to agree. Illness is often the one thing that slows us down long enough to allow us to lean in and listen to our own story and the wonder of it all,
Elizabeth
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Thanks for your visit to ‘Biographic’. I wrote it that way not to focus attention on any one person. I agree it can be about every and anyone. The universe has it’s own agenda that seems to be certain. Often we want what we cannot have. Only to realize that we are very luck to have what we do have. As your piece suggests, we are still individually evolving. 🙂
Thanks Jules. It all goes to show that human beings are strangely wonderful creatures.
Elizabeth
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This poem certainly resonated with me. Difficulties often lead us in a better direction. Thanks for posting this.
You are certainly right about that, Denise. Thanks for stopping and reading,
Elizabeth
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My 2nd daughter had a surgical scar on her neck. She hated it & blamed it for her every set-back in relationships. Her father, brothers & sisters & cousins & friends all tried to tell her it was not that noticeable, she was able to cover it with make up, but eventually she had a tattoo put over it.
Thanks for the story Marian. Scars are sometimes really difficult to deal with. Although mine is hidden beneath my hair, I carried a burden of doubt about just how well my mind worked. The doctors told my parents, that if I did recover from the surgery, I would probably suffer some form of Cerebral Palsy. My actions were closely scrutinized for years afterward, and I had lots of difficulty trusting what came out of my own head. We learn new coping mechanisms when we are traumatized and mine made me quite different from my siblings. That is the ugliness I refer to in the poem. Perhaps I needed to be clearer about that.
Elizabeth
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A medicine man once told me “Your greatest pain is your strongest medicine” . And it is true.
My own experience tells me that is true. Thank you, Sherry,
Elizabeth
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i LOVE this ~ and i agree, there are no “accidents” just the Universe or Powers That Be stepping in to show us a different path.
♥
Not so much a different path, but a different way of seeing the path we are on, and how that seeing alters our steps, one at a time. Thanks for your visit Dani, and the new song you shared,
Elizabeth
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Really like and appreciate this poem.
Thanks Susan, I rather like it myself,
Elizabeth
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Your poem made me think of how everything we go through shapes us.
I have a scar like that too. Mine was the result of biopsy of tissue in my knee when I was ten. This was part of the poking and prodding I underwent before a rather lucid and patient Indian doctor finally diagnosed me with Lyme Disease a few months later. It’s a reminder of what I survived, and I’ve slowly accepted it as a part of me.
-Nicole
And your comment reminds me that we each own a hundred/thousand stories that, if left untold/unexpressed will lead to some form of madness. As you said, those stories/experiences shape us and the choices we make. Thanks for the visit and your story,
Elizabeth
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nicely done Elizabeth
Thank you very much Wayne,
Elizabeth
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